The Shocking Truth About John Wesley

The Reverend John Wesley's 'Method' included more than just a jolt of the Spirit...

Even the most devout Methodists will be excused if they've never considered what their denomination's founder's kitchen looks like. I am standing in it. I am on a tour of the John Wesley House and Museum of Methodism in London, England, and in my ears are the voices of James Rogers, a preacher who lived in the Wesley home, and Elizabeth "Betsy" Ritchie, John Wesley's housekeeper.

All right, what I hear is only actors, playing Rogers and Betsy on the audiocassette tour. But to one who spent his youth fidgeting in Methodist and Holiness church pews, the house is entrancing. In a room off John Wesley's kitchen are display cases containing his personal belongings-- christening robe and baby rattle; his nightcap, shoes, and traveling case, containing the holy man's fork and fruit knife--relics displayed with such reverence it's hard to believe Protestants were involved. "The one on the far right has a very special meaning for me," Rogers says of one cabinet. "It's a lock of Mr. Wesley's hair, cut after his death from his poor, dear head and given me." After a pause, Reverend Rogers adds solemnly, "Please, take as much time as you want to look at this cabinet, and when you're finished, switch the tape guide on again."

Wesley moved into his four-story Georgian townhouse in 1779, a year after he built his famous chapel--the "Cathedral of Methodism"--next door. In 1898, Wesley's House was opened to the public, and the Museum of Methodism, established in the chapel crypt in 1984, boasts "one of the world's largest collections of Wesleyan ceramics and some of the finest Methodist paintings."

One of these paintings is the now-famous Robert Hunter portrait of Wesley, which he cherished as one of the finest of him ever rendered--"a most striking likeness," he wrote in his journal. But what Wesley didn't mention was that the portrait, painted when he was 62, makes him appear 30 years younger.

Wesley's pinkness is attributable to what Betsy kindly described as "Mr. Wesley's abiding interest in health." Interest, in the days when every medical procedure was an experiment, is a bit of an understatement. In the dining room is displayed Wesley's "chamber horse"--an exercise chair with a thick leather cushion filled with air, which, when sat in, flattened like an accordion. Wesley hopped up and down in this chair for hours, simulating horseback riding. Betsy said, "He was convinced that a due degree of exercise was essential for health and long life. Walking was the best form, followed by riding. He loved exercise, even in old age, and was physically fit!" (A docent told me Wesley often paced his bedroom, having calculated that 200 trips wall-to-wall equaled a mile.)

In other words, John Wesley was a health nut. "I am as strong at 81 as I was at 21," he wrote, "but abundantly more healthy, being a stranger to the headache, toothache and other bodily disorders which attended me in my youth."

This was no secret to his contemporaries. As part of his social ministry, Wesley himself manufactured and dispensed medicine at The Foundery. For this, Wesley was labeled a quack. As one satirist wrote:

"Tottenham's the best accustom'd Place,There Magus squints men into Grace,W-s-y sells Powders, Draughts, and Pills,Sov'reign against all sorts of Ills."

Wesleyan theology has no grips on me any longer. But being "follicularly challenged," I couldn't resist trying Wesley's cure for hair loss: "Rub the part morning and evening with onions, till it is red; and rub it afterwards with honey." After several attempts, all I wound up with were onion tears streaming down my face and a sticky raw forehead that attracted flies.

For lethargy, Wesley recommended "strong vinegar up the nose." And I must say, the vinegar certainly perked me up, as I spent several minutes gagging, spitting, and discharging my nasal cavity into a paper towel.

"Primitive Physic: An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases" was Wesley's main tome on health, which he published in 1747. By its 24th edition, in 1792, the book included thousands of therapies, many of which Wesley tried himself, noting, sensibly, "Tried" after each. For example, his cure for an earache: "Put in a roasted fig, or onion, as hot as may be: Tried. Or, blow the smoke of tobacco strongly into it." And his cure for a toothache: "Be electrified through the teeth: Tried."

On the house tour, which begins in the basement kitchen, Betsy explains in a prim but exuberant British accent that only plain meals were prepared--"for Mr. Wesley decreed that all pickled, smoked, or salted food, and all high-seasoned, is unwholesome!"

Perfectly wholesome to Wesley, but grounds to expel the old man from most evangelical colleges in America, was relishing fine wines. "I remember how vexed he was," Rogers murmured in my ear, "when a case of claret shipped to him as a gift was seized by customs and, despite several written requests, was never released to him." To think--the man whose teachings form the doctrinal core of, for example, the teetotalling Church of the Nazarene, himself tippled with the devil.